Speedlinks: 'The Office' Edition

I'm still an old-school guy when it comes to developing projects. I like to keep my ideas on physical surfaces. And without whiteboards in The Cave, we revert to stickies. Like, everywhere.

Today's speedlinks are office-themed; one an actual shoot-in-a-boring-office solution and another to show what can be done with … a lot of stickies. __________

Speaking of stickies, on my recent trip to San Francisco I saw some pretty creative office window art in the tech buildings downtown. So now my formerly random stickies patterns have similarly evolved into classic 8-bit video game art. Next on the list: Super Mario. Beats the hell out of hiring a decorator.

Today's first link shows what can be done with waaay more stickies, used as a full-length background. I have used them as headshot backgrounds before, but this is much cooler.

Chris Crisman posted about his Philly Mag shoot (cover shown at left) with a time-lapse video and a BTS lighting shot.

The photos were shot for both cover and inside lede for "The List Issue," the results being way above the typical 50 Top Docs crap from our own local citymag. It's a simple concept, executed well.

Come to think of it, Philly Mag has been kicking butt lately -- with Chris getting a lot of interesting work.

And NYC-based photographer Brad Trent, who appears to practically live in visually boring office environments, posted a couple of before-and-after shots from a recent Barron's shoot.

Brad doesn't get into the lighting on these, just gives his approach to an shooting biz portrait environment that would suck the soul out of a lesser man. I love the way he can walk into just about any environment and make an interesting photo, just by overlaying his signature lighting and approach.

(And given his style, you can assume the lighting is strong ring fill with a hard key light coming in from the side.)

Bonus takeaway: Why is there no ring reflection screaming back at him from the shiny white board? Because the Guy In Tie in the center was almost certainly placed there consciously to act as a human shield. Works for windows, too.